National Jewish group calls for removal of Philadelphia-area monument to a Nazi ‘SS’ unit

A national Jewish advocacy organization is calling for the removal of a monument to Nazi collaborators in Montgomery County, just outside of Philadelphia, that until recently went largely unnoticed for decades.

The large stone cross, which was the subject of an Inquirer article published Sunday, was erected about 30 years ago at St. Mary’s Ukrainian Catholic Cemetery in Elkins Park in honor of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the Schutzstaffel — the Nazi military branch often referred to simply as “the SS.”

The unit, known also as the “1st Galician” or “SS Galizien,” was formed in 1943. It was composed of volunteers and conscripts from Nazi-occupied Ukraine who fought for Germany during World War II. Some in the Ukrainian diaspora view those soldiers not as Nazi collaborators but “freedom fighters” who wanted to establish Ukrainian independence by battling the Soviet Union.

Jewish groups — and many historians — don’t see it that way.

» READ MORE: For 30 years, a memorial to Nazi collaborators sat largely unnoticed just outside Philadelphia. Now it’s drawing outrage.

In a statement Tuesday, the American Jewish Committee called for the monument to be removed.

“We trust our Ukrainian friends and colleagues recognize that this cannot remain,” the statement said. “We urge them to act in the same spirit that motivated Ukrainian President Zelensky to correct these historical myths at home and remove this memorial stone from our community.”

Zelensky, who is Jewish, has condemned marchers who similarly celebrated the unit during a 2021 parade in Kyiv.

The Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia and the regional director of the Anti-Defamation League both said last week that they had only recently learned of the monument, which is located next to an elementary school and in a community that is also home to several synagogues.

It had received little publicity until this year.

In May, a Ukrainian politician visited the cemetery to pose in front of the cross, which features the lion and crowns insignia of SS Galizien. It gained some traction on Twitter. Last week, the Forward, a Jewish newspaper that has been tracking monuments to Nazi collaborators around the world, wrote an article about it.

Records from a Ukrainian veterans association, apparently now defunct, show that a group of Ukrainian veterans initially sought to create the burial grove, which contains about 50 gravestones for SS Galizien veterans and their spouses.

The cemetery is owned by the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, near Northern Liberties, which functions as the primary church for the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia. The same veterans association records state the church approved the memorial, donated land for its creation and dispatched clergy to consecrate the monument in the early 1990s.

Church officials disputed that.

A spokesperson for the archeparchy, Mariana Karapinka, declined to comment on the monument last week. She said cemetery monuments “are not subject to the approval of the archeparchy,” but did not have any information on what group paid for it.

She instead sent a document for “historical context” which said the actions and legacy of SS Galizien “continue to be debated by historians.”

“[T]he morality of fighting in a unit organized by the criminal Nazi state even if intended by those who joined to fend off the criminal Stalinist state continues to be a topic for reflection,” the document states. “Those who erected the monument saw those who joined the unit as fighting in the interest of Ukraine.”

That explanation is not uncommon among some Ukrainians living in North America. Thousands of SS Galizien veterans are buried across the US, Canada, the United Kingdom, some near similar memorials. Just a few blocks away from St. Mary’s cemetery, the Ukrainian Educational and Cultural Center has a memorial wall bearing the unit’s insignia, and framed photos of prominent members.

The UECC last week referred questions back to the church.

“They were greatly opposed to Russians and Communists — they thought they could get their independence restored by being on the German side,” Edward Zetick, the local post commander of the Ukrainian American Veterans, said last week.

But historians consulted by The Inquirer warned against whitewashing the atrocities of the Nazi regime and its collaborators.

“The claim that Waffen-SS soldiers fought for ‘freedom’ of Ukraine is a revisionist claim, as these people stood under the command of Heinrich Himmler and took a personal oath to Adolf Hitler,” said Per Anders Rudling, a professor at Lund University in Sweden. “I think that perhaps it should be up to the unit’s admirers to clarify their concept of freedom,” he added.

Marcia Bronstein, regional director of AJC Philadelphia/Southern New Jersey, said her group would reach out to local Ukrainian groups in response to news of the monument.

“You can’t erase atrocities against Jews and other minorities,” Bronstein said Tuesday. “We have to have a reckoning about history so people understand what happened. It’s not appropriate to try to cover it up.”